Instinct vs. Instruction
Learning how to cultivate your intuition is the greatest investment you can make.
Ask anyone and they’ll tell you my mum is a phenomenal cook. Not only Indian food, as one might understand but against all expectations, pretty much any other cuisine, especially diner food.
What? Diner food? Very random.
But that’s not the most surprising thing - it’s that she never learned to cook until after she was married.
Immigrating to Canada at the age of 19, the youngest of 7 kids, she never really ever had to step into a kitchen - there was always someone else that took care of the meals - older sisters, sisters-in-law.
But necessity required her to learn. Both for her traditional new household, but also to survive as immigrants in 1970s Canada. Through the improbable yet classically immigrant journey, my Indian parents, who had never before seen snow, landed in Saskatchewan in the late 70s. If your Canadian geography is rusty - it’s the province directly north of North Dakota and pretty similar in its small towns, heartland hospitality, farming heritage and bitterly cold winters.
Before my brothers and I showed up, my parents were just trying to survive by doing whatever jobs helped a modest roof over their heads. At some point, my mum was given an opportunity to run a diner in Assiniboia - a bustling metropolis of 2,000, about 2 hours outside of Regina, the capital of the province (a veritably populous 175,000).
So what did my mother do, when faced with the task of not only running a business but cooking the comfort food of the heartland?
She learned.
She learned how to make incredible scrambled eggs and grilled cheese and Cinnamon buns and egg salad and…. The list goes on.
She learned because she had to, but because she had to also learn such a wide range of dishes, she couldn’t simply rely on rote memorization of the recipes and instructions. She had to hone her tastebuds and her instincts on what it meant to perfect the flavor and consistency of a lemon meringue pie or the done-ness of the medium-well burger (remarkable for someone who grew up in a strictly hindu vegetarian home).
The only reason she not only survived but thrived was that she learned to hone and rely on her instincts and stepped away from the comfort and safety net of instructions.
Until it was time to teach us how to cook. The thing I remember first - before anything else, was my mum coming towards me with an outstretch spoon. On it would be anything from some samosa filling or egg salad. It was my job to answer: “Kavoo lage che?” (how is it?).
Within those 3 words was a universe of explanation - did it have enough salt, heat, sugar and brightness (lemon), sure. But really - did it hit the indescribable mark of perfect balance.
Because if it didn’t (and it rarely did from the first go), we had to experiment until it did. A little more jalepeno. A dash more salt. A squeeze of lemon.
From there the lessons went to the cooking and feeling your way through the steps. Starting any dish with the “vagar” (sautéing) - oil or butter or ghee with the aromatics of garlic, spices, onion. Then layering on the vegetables, the sauces. Tasting, feeling, seeing your way to done.
I don’t think there is one meal we ever used a recipe for. Not a precise, written out one anyway.
For a while, this bugged me. As a teenager and young adult, I found it frustrating to cook Indian food as well as her because there were no recipes to learn from, to use as a guidepost, a safety net. I decided that baking was really my thing because I loved how the precision of specific ingredients combined in a very finicky, precise way would almost guarantee you that perfect product.
As a child that needed to get everything right, this was more my speed. Do this and get this result.
It hasn’t been until the past 5 or so years as I’ve left the comforts of the known path and explored the wilds of things I know very little about, that I’ve rekindled my love of cooking by instinct.
Devouring cookbooks like Food Lab and Salt Fat Acid Heat have helped me realize what I’ve known all along. My power lies in my instinct. My being present within every moment. Listening, looking, smelling, savoring.
I don’t have to look far to see this very same lesson in my work. Where I feel at my most powerful is where I am not trying to follow anyone else’s playbook. Where I am finding my own data and relying on my own instinct to navigate and make decisions.
It’s when I feel most in control even when I don’t know what the outcome will be.
And so, I urge anyone to quickly leave the confines of instructions. Whether it’s cooking or startups or Lego.
1) First understanding the principles. Always seek to understand the foundational variables. What is primary and what is secondary. How they interact with each other.
2) Experiment. Get comfortable with the notion that the goal isn’t to get it right in the first go. It’s to get to the 80%. Then experiment the rest of the way there. Taste/test, adjust, test again.
3) Focus on honing your gut. Challenge yourself to predict how something will go - whether it’s the reception of a new feature by users or rolling out a new marketing message. The point is not just to find success, but it’s to refine your instincts along the way. Over time, this is what will make your work exceptional and really unique.
In the end, instructions are valuable guides - they help the novice get in and understand the game. But over time, they become crutches. Safety nets that are secretly suffocating in their lack of creativity.
Instead, awaken your instincts. Prime them to be present and alert. It will more than likely be much more uncomfortable. But in time you’ll realize you have power and comfort in a completely new capacity.
Not because you followed a recipe or a playbook to the last detail.
But because your instincts guided you to create so much more than you ever thought possible.